Pictures of You
by Pchefbeth
Summary: Post Season 4 Finale, Jo leaves Eureka but I don't think that she left empty handed.
1. Chapter 1

**Pictures of you****  
><strong>**by Pchefbeth******

_**Post Season 4 Season finale, Jo still leaves Eureka, but I don't think that she left completely empty handed.**_

In a dingy motel room, states away from Eureka Jo Lupo lay in bed trying to relax enough to fall asleep, but her mind was filled with too many questions. She'd left the television on, hoping that the noise would help distract her, but it hadn't. A side glance at the bedside table showed how late it was, but it wasn't what captured her interest. She reached out and picked up the stack of pictures that lay in a small bundle on the nightstand, and began to flip through them. She hadn't taken very much with her on her journey of self discovery. But she had brought a few things that she felt that she couldn't live without; specifically her favorite pictures of family and friends. There was a picture of her and Fargo from the last holiday party standing next to the Christmas tree. Another one of Carter and Zoe hugging on the day that Zoe had left for Harvard and another of Allison with both kids that she had convinced Kevin to pose for. She'd kept a photo from Grace and Henry's vow renewal ceremony, and another picture that she'd managed to sneak of Vincent in his kitchen. But as she flipped to the last picture in the stack she stared sadly at the one that she hadn't taken.

She used to have hundreds of pictures of the two of them together. She loved catching him when he wasn't looking. Usually he would retaliate by grabbing the camera from her and insisting on getting a photo or two of her, or one of them together. One of her favorites was one that he'd taken as he'd kissed her, his arm outstretched with the camera to capture the moment. He'd managed to cut off part of their heads, but it was such a sweet moment that she'd kept a copy of it next to her bed, and had fallen asleep looking at it nearly every night. Until the time line change had taken all of those photos from her. Now the only images that she had of him were the ones in her head, and the single one in her hand.

She touched the edge of the photograph staring at the face that was so familiar and yet so foreign to her. She'd had no pictures of Zane in this reality. Theirs wasn't the sort of relationship where she felt she could have taken his photo without a lot of questions. She certainly couldn't have explained that she wanted to take it with her when she left. She wasn't even sure how or even if he'd react when she discovered that she was gone. A few weeks before when he'd been contemplating his own departure she wouldn't have thought that he would think enough to care, but their last conversation had her questioning everything in a new light.

She traced an absent finger over his face in the photo recalling with perfect clarity the moment that it showed. She'd routinely had to review security feed footage and often she had included photographs from the camera's in the reports, usually to document damage or equipment inventory, but when she'd been reviewing the footage from the P.A.L.S incident she'd decided to capture the image and keep it for herself. They had lain there on the floor, trying to catch their breaths, both smiling in relief as the computer voice told them that the core meltdown had been averted.

Staring at it as she had for weeks after the incident she was reminded exactly what she'd realized as he'd pulled her to safety; she wasn't getting him out of her system at all. In fact she was dangerously close to losing her heart to him all over again. The lines between this Zane and her Zane were all but gone.

She'd spent the first part of that day trying to convince herself that she was over him and that she wouldn't end up in his arms again no matter what happened. Then she'd spent the rest of the day worried that he was going to die and be taken from her. When the day had finally ended she was at war with her own feelings and didn't know what she wanted, which she admitted to herself was why she was in this mess.

So she'd done what she'd always done. Shut down, try to minimize emotional damage by maintaining her distance- again, and look where that had gotten her. Alone, and unable to shore up the walls anymore. She found herself wondering far too often what he was doing at that moment, and if, as he'd promised, he was thinking of her.

She propped the picture of Zane up against the base of the lamp on the nightstand, and turning onto her side, with the image still fresh in her mind she closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Pictures of you Chapter 2**

**By Pchefbeth**

**Has anyone else noticed that Zane, in either reality is SOO much easier to write than Jo? My next and final chapter...at least I'm pretty sure it is. The Astraeus didn't vanish in this segment, and Allison didn't go with them. **

He couldn't sleep again. It was almost getting ridiculous. He had taken to working extra shifts each day in order to exhaust himself enough so that this wouldn't happen, but night after night he found himself wide awake and staring at the ceiling of his small room. He didn't understand why he didn't feel content. His days were filled with some of the best science imaginable. If he wasn't assisting with the processing of new data that field teams were collecting, he was out participating in an EVA and admiring the Rings of Saturn up close. But when it came time to sleep he found that he couldn't.

It was almost ironic he thought as he looked from wall to wall. Six years previously he'd been stuck in a cell no larger than this one, where the window had bars. Now he voluntarily was in another room more than a billion light years, literally and figuratively away from that life, but the feeling of satisfaction was hollow still.

He lay on the bunk, absently staring at the ceiling for another moment before he uttered a curse, and turning over, reached under his pillow and withdrew a set of photographs. He stared at the image on top as he lay back down, reliving the memory as he did each time he looked at it. It was one of the best days that he could remember. He had been granted a pardon for his past transgressions; the paperwork had been signed and sealed, all with the help of the woman he now looked at. She'd helped him in ways he couldn't even begin to explain, the pardon only a small part of it. Her trust in him had allowed him to really begin to fit into the town for the first time; and it had led him here, following in the footsteps of a dream that he had long given up.

He remembered after he had signed the papers the elation that he had felt as he walked freely into the glass cell in her office, where he was often a frequent visitor. As he'd reminisced not so fondly about all the times that she had locked him inside it, he'd looked back to where she stood at the entrance to the cell, a sad smile on her face. He remembered that he'd teased her suggesting that he might leave; he couldn't help it, it was second nature to him, but he thought that he'd given away the joke when he couldn't stop staring at her mouth. Goodbye, he thought ironically to himself now. It was the furthest thing from what he wanted to say to her.

Instead of calling him on his bluff as he'd expected, she'd kissed him. More than kissed him he thought, smiling as he remembered all too well the feeling of her hands and her lips as she'd anxiously helped him take off his shirt before removing her own clothing. That was the image that he'd chosen to print and take with him when he went into the security footage to make sure that there were two small but crucial glitches in the security system's camera software from that day. As he had located them, and relived them once more, just to make sure that he hadn't missed anything, he'd taken two pictures from the record; one from each time. He'd wanted to remember just how she'd looked, clinging tightly to him as she kissed him, as if she hadn't wanted to let him go. He'd initially teased her hoping that he would get her to admit that she wanted him to stay, but he hadn't been about to dissuade her from any other reaction that she'd had. In the photo her hands were curled in his hair, pulling him closer as she kissed him. His shirt lay forgotten on the floor where she'd thrown it moments before, and his own hands had been busy pulling her shirt out of the waistband of her pants as he too had been anxious to get his hands on her. He thought the moment captured exactly what he had loved best about that day.

The second picture slipped out from behind the first, and as he caught a glimpse his smile faded almost completely from his face. This one was always harder to look at. Not an hour before it had been taken he'd heard that she'd been in an accident at the AGI lab, one that from all reports given had been a very close call. Apparently Jo had refused to leave as they realized the danger, and instead she'd stayed as she attempted to shut off the valve from which poisonous gases had vented. It hadn't worked and they had been saved by the rapidly growing plants as they reacted to the nitrates in the atmosphere. They alone had shielded her and the others until help arrived. He hadn't liked hearing that. She was often in danger, they both were. Eureka wasn't exactly an easy place to work, but somehow that day it had been different. He'd been anxious, edgy even, until he could see for himself that she was alright. A reaction that had not sat well with him. He'd been forced to wait while she conducted some sort of interview with an inspector from the DOD before he could finally get her alone. He remembered how the sensation in his chest had lifted when he'd seen her, standing holding that ridiculous white dress as she hummed to herself. He'd had to take an extra moment to calm himself before he spoke.

He could barely remember what he'd said to her, but he could remember how strongly he had felt; needing to make sure that she was alright. He'd kept his hands in his pockets at first because he couldn't remember wanting to reach out to touch her that badly before. All he could think was that when he'd kissed her that morning and joked about saying goodbye that it could have been so close to the real thing.

He stared hard at the image that he'd chosen to keep, it was the moment when he had finally kissed her and realized that just kissing her wasn't going to be enough. He'd all but pushed her back onto her desk, crushing his mouth to hers, needing to prove to himself that she was alive.

Afterwards as he'd watched her straighten up her office, he recalled his previous conversations with Fargo about dessert. The advice that he'd given had always been what had worked for him. No strings attached, as little emotion as possible, but as he watched her walk away as if it didn't mean anything he realized that his own advice wasn't working in this situation. He had the same feeling that he did now, and he absently rubbed his hand over her chest where the ache still lingered. He closed his eyes and let the photograph fall forgotten onto his chest as he tried once again to fall asleep. He still wasn't entirely sure what the feeling was, but the one thing he knew for certain was that it definitely wasn't hunger.

_**Good God -they had better get these two back together quickly as season five starts or I'm going to need a shrink!**_


End file.
